welcome back to the big picture i'm tom arbonne coming up in this half hour if you go to church on sundays you don't expect to hear a sermon about why one political candidate is better than another so why are nearly a thousand religious leaders now deciding to trash the separation of church and state and openly endorse political candidates also did you know that you can donate money through credit card machines at churches in sweden or the banking in kenya means texting on a cell phone is the world headed for a digital economy and if so why might that be good news for the poor impoverished and there are a lot of big ideas flying around this election cycle but which ones are going to

help the working people and which ones are going to leave the middle class in the dust as the wealthy romney rich level elite continue to thrive i'll tell you in tonight's daily said. it's about the rest of the news more than a thousand religious leaders across the nation have decided to take a wrecking ball to that wall separating church and state the conservative group alliance defending freedom as scheduled water what they are calling hope of freedom sunday for october seventh when church leaders across america will devote their sermons to the election and campaign on behalf of mostly right wing political candidates great i.r.s. a lot churches enjoy tax exempt status a long as they don't participate in political campaigns on behalf of or against any

particular candidate those church leaders also plan to send video of their right wing political sermons to the i.r.s. in hopes of triggering a legal case that could strike down laws again. tax exempt political activity in churches today many churches have been turned into very lucrative businesses and those church businesses haven't shied away from using their wealth to aid numerous far right political causes so the question is the churches want to operate like a business and this is a time they get taxed like a business as well trying to not offer her take on this is dr carol swain professor of political science and law at vanderbilt university and author of the book be the people a call to reclaim america's faith and promise dr swain welcome back to the program dr tom perry of you i am very well i hope you are to. so many churches are making millions tens of millions of dollars and in fact so many you have so many pastors who are you know making way way more than the average where i'm i disagree. why at

this very. seriously you don't you don't think the mega churches with multi-million dollar budgets and so and and pastors making four or five hundred thousand dollars salaries are real i don't think they're the norm there is the mega churches in most cities but they have every church you know the pastor is not making millions of dollars nor do i believe they are preaching from the pope to tell him they are congregants who to vote for but i have noticed that there are more pastors now trying to instruct their congregations about biblical principles and telling them that they are responsible for their vote and that they should make sure that the candidate they support my mouth with biblical principles and they are also saying you are like being a president not a pastor. well you remember. guessing carol who won the century and i believe it was came to jesus and showed him

a coin and said you know should i be paying my taxes. and and jesus replied you know whose pictures on that and the guys and caesar and he said render unto caesar what caesar's and under god what's gods in other words the founder of christianity called for a wall of separation between church and state isn't the moment that a church starts talking about political candidates and elections the moment that they've stepped over that line that the founder of christianity established and you know tom de lay in my nine hundred fifty four lyndon johnson passed the johnson amendment that. he is responsible while there are any code against churches up until today and churches could talk about whatever they wanted to talk about i think that they have constitutional rights like any other institution and so they are trying to reclaim their voice because they have been found with so why don't we have laws that we are losing the culture war i think

that church is paramount would be a shame to teach biblical principles and one political party. to those principles better than on the other then it makes sense for them to at least hold their congregants responsible or at least give them the information they need to make intelligent sure with this you don't realize the dr swain that's the exact same argument the taliban makes. well let's not talk about the taliban i'm talking about america where we care with both their freedom of religion freedom must be and freedom of association and churches don't lose their constitutional right and it was one thousand people there is no constitutional right it was sixty four there is no constitutional right to a tax advantage to a tax break why should we be giving these huge multi multi million dollar corporations and they are incorporated even as nonprofits why should we be giving

these giant corporations huge tax breaks when they're violating the law. there are some churches that have a lot of. they have more than just that sanctuary you know that they do have bookstores they have a lot of other things going on it's up to the to the community that to decide when a church is involved in so many of the businesses that it has nothing to do with. that religious mission but most of the churches i know very much involved in ministering not just to their congregants but also to the community and to people around the world well let's agree that you know taxing them when they start becoming political preachers i haven't they done the same exact same thing as if they decided to go in the business of manufacturing cars they've stepped out of the religious business and they've gone into something else in this case either politics or auto manufacturing i don't know how many churches i actually tell in

their congregants the both candidates i know what my church my pastor is not telling us to vote for a particular. political party or candidate but he is instructed not about biblical values and principles and telling us that we're responsible for how. he's telling us that we're responsible for how we vote and we are not a mega church and the money that goes into the. church we see has been you know good purposes. all in favor of the good purposes i'm just you know politics is basically a business of speech and so it seems that. i'm with you on free speech but i'm not with the tax code is not a constitutional right there's not a constitutional right and i don't think. that that that that got that amendment through and while i know he was tired of the church's beating up on him i'm totally

with you on that no l.b.j. did that in sixty four basically to. the church has to stop picking on it but you know what you think that churches have that right up until one nine hundred fifty or sixty four yeah yeah no i talked to carol swain we're out of time but thanks so much for dropping by and having this conversation with me. it's always nice talking to you. our first comments and i come some derek who had this take on banks toure's why would banks just think about reforming their ways when our president and congress refused to look backwards well yeah we have a problem the banks actually by and large own our president and congress and that's something that is only going to be fixed if we the people rise up this is what's so

encouraging about the candidates see in my piece of elizabeth warren is that she and the fact that at the democratic party at the d.n.c. at the democratic national convention she stood up and she came right out and called out the bankers she said these bankers are walking around in congress you know the same people who crashed the economy acting like we owe them a thank. and so you know it's not we we need to leave behind this notion that politicians whether as the president was born or anybody else are going to save us what happens is politicians start talking differently because we push them hard enough to regardless of the issue and on this issue we need to be pushing hard start throwing some of these bankers in jails or breaking up the big banks final hamann of the night comes from poncho who had this suggestion for fighting back against the effects of citizens united i think that the way to cut or citizens united is to use the distinction between private speech and commercial speech which is a distinction recognized by the supreme court of the united states commercial

speech is not afforded the same protections as noncommercial speech in this case the specific product is the candidate in question the speech is advertisements for or against a candidate and the disseminator is certainly economically motivated to distribute the speech in fact if a corporation tries to argue that their speech is political rather than commercial then i would think any stockholder could sue them since the management must act to increase shareholder value and spending money on ads or campaigns that does that is clearly commercial speech but ads they do not do that and may not be classified as commercial speech are decreasing shareholder value in the amount spent. it's actually an excellent argument that a corporation basically existed make money and by the by laws by and large it has to be there to make money so if it's in gauging a political speech as simply as a matter of fact it's doing so because it expects to get money back from another words if corporations putting a thousand dollars in

a politician it's because they expect a politician to do something is going to give them back ten thousand dollars. now that's tests should be illegal right and in fact for much of american history it was in one thousand nine hundred seven republican president theodore roosevelt got the tillman act passed through congress which made it a felony for any corporation to give any money to any of it to any candidate for political office and that law stood from one thousand nine hundred seven until two thousand and ten when it was struck down by the u.s. supreme court and citizens united it's time to bring it back that's it for your take my take tonight if you'd like your comments and questions heard on the side of the big picture listen up. we want to know your to send us your comments by visiting the thom hartmann facebook page by a twitter at tom underscore hartman or in the chat room on the message boards or through the blog at heartland dot com you can also leave a message on our rant line at two to three six fifty three zero six agree disagree sound off it's all welcome to remember that your comments may be used on the air.

but it's there was. a study released last week in italy researchers claim that the average size of a man's package has become ten percent smaller over the last fifty years or so this study caught the attention of rush limbaugh who seems to be obsessed with anything having to do. on thursdays episode of the rush limbaugh show limbaugh gave his take on what is causing all of that shrinkage. in studies suggested that it was weight gain smoking stress and environmental pollutants rush disagree take it was. i don't buy this i think it's meant as a money difference of his tied to the last fifty years the average size of a. member is ten percent smaller his fifty years asked me to from a nazis limbaugh went on to say give him time of the blame bush but air pollution

verses family nonsense ha. stop blaming feminists for your small business. growing up we've all done it at some point given a dollar or two to those in need of the homeless on america's streets is giving the less fortunate cash really the best way to help them improve their lives or is it helping them slip further and further into poverty.

you know how sometimes you see a story and it seems so for lengthly you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom hartman welcome to the big picture. here is mitt romney trying to figure out the name of that thing that many americans call a dollar. i'm sorry i'm just a guy who cares an awful lot about you sir are a fool you know what kind of mind their terrorist cells in your neighborhood all want to give us aid to feature isn't a liberal and the christian point you. can see your beliefs about it but it's

going to school for you to distract us from what you and i should care about because they're profit driven industry that sells a sensationalistic garbage he calls it breaking news i'm having martin and we're going to break that. so sometimes you know what you know and sometimes you know what you don't know and sometimes as the firesign theater says everything you know is wrong and. you can hear you're right. to say that you're right. and you know is wrong so when you see someone down on their locker homeless what do you do to help most of the time you're probably getting some spare change a few bucks right believe it or not might be bell or better off at least in some countries giving them a cheap disposable cell phone you think the giving cash to the nation's poor los

fortune of the world's poor the best way to help them then perhaps everything you know is wrong joining me now is david wolman a journalist and author of the end of money counterfeiters preachers techies dreamers and becoming cashless society david welcome. nice to be here thanks for joining us tonight so you know we've been brought up thinking the more cash the better why is it that cash is not a good thing for poor people around much of the world. well this was really a rebel atory part of the whole reporting project for me i just i'm not an economist i'm not an international of development type so i had no idea this idea that cash is the enemy of the poor to quote the gates foundation economists i was shadowing around in india and it's a difficult idea to unpack of course because if you have a boatload of cash you are no longer poor but the fact is that cash has this hidden life in all of these hidden costs and for people who are wealthier it's very easy

to avoid those costs but those costs become employed and more punitive the less well off you are and that has to do with for example distance to getting to a bank or the hazard of funds being extorted or just stolen right after persons and there is this bigger issue of access to the formal economy and when you're stuck using cash and cash only it's much harder to save well no matter how much or how little for the kind of investments that will help you climb out of poverty and stay out of our being so. i understand that in many countries in the world poor people use cell phones to bank basically and they have a cashless society. can you explain that a little bit for our viewers and then. riddle me this batman as it were how is it that in the united states where a cell phone can cost you one hundred bucks

a month that that would be a viable option for the poor as in most of the world cell phone bills are anywhere from five dollars a month to thirty dollars a. so this whole phenomenon is really jaja happening in and we're seeing the real innovation in this area it's not coming from silicon valley it's coming from places like the african rift valley and the idea is that it's everybody has a mobile phone you don't need a smartphone to send money back and forth to grandma in the countryside for example you can use a certain cheapo nokia brand model which will do the trick and for example there's a an electronics shop repairman who i feature in the book who works in the slums of delhi just barely scraping by he says remittances six family members in the countryside every now and then is used to have to be like a three day round trip for the guy so he has to pay someone to look after his shop he has to buy a bus ticket he has to hide his money in his little iron and. now energy of course

is away from three days of the income generation now basically with some quick text messaging he can send those funds to his family members and this is having a huge impact on economic development around the world this is kind of got a lot more money mobile money transfer level to it is mobile banking you know how does this gentleman then access a bank account not so that you know fraudulent or dangerous bankers can do is the things with his money but really so that you know he can have a safe and secure place to store his wealth because you and i actually take that benefit of banking for granted in our everyday operations. and how is that. it's really beautiful image for a guy like this you know and i asked him right off the bat what do you think it's fair that the company offering the service is giving a little money at the top or don't you worry about security concerns of transacting to your phone and he never said but his eyes looked at me like are you crazy did you even listen to media for ten minutes catalogs for you the tremendous benefits

of having this tool in my pocket now so no it was this something that could work for poor people in the united states or the working poor in. i really think it can you know right now where it we're at like twenty million people who don't have a bank account and upwards of seventy million people who are going to quote unquote under the act so there is an obvious need for this service out there and it's never been profitable but here in the united states right now there's there's literally a multi-billion dollar industry a payday loans of basically ripping off those very people you are just identified howard in an economy that is made up of grifters in our banking industry how do we possibly do something like this we have just a half a minute to it so to get people off the hook of a lender or check cashing services and the rest of it you get them into the formal economy and that is not necessarily a statement that appliance bankers as we know them but the reality is that if you get a lot of those people bank accounts and they can step away from those equity just

feeds from the payday lenders and if the costs of transacting only cash ratcheted down for them in a way again that you and i just take for granted i imagine that your wealth is not you know stored in briefcases under your bed at home not david thank you very much . craig talking with you tonight. thank you. now everything you know about the perils of cash is right. if this is a big idea larger than mitt romney should lose he was on sixty minutes talking about his big idea. presidencies are remembered for big ideas emancipation social security man on the moon what's your big idea freedom i want to restore the kind of freedom that has always driven america's economy and

that's allowed us to be the shining city on the hill. freedom that's it for a place that can easily fit on a bumper sticker you see mitt romney's so-called big idea is the same big idea that's been pushed by every republican since reagan we the people are free this believe has been the underlying basis for everything i've tried to do these past eight years the vision of a society where men and women are free free to choose but we're government is not as free to override their decisions we have to fight for our freedoms also economic and our national security freedoms it was ronald reagan who said that freedom is always just one generation away from extinction freedom freedom freedom after her and all those march the word starts to lose meaning in the founders by the way didn't use the word freedom they used the word

liberty what exactly do these republicans mean when they talk about freedom pluckily governor good hair down in texas rick perry explained it for us. america needs to be about where you need to be about freedom from overtaxation freedom over litigation freedom oh. regulation that's the key right there when republicans are talking about freedom they're not talking about freedom like we think of it and i'm talking about freedom for what they're actually talking about is freedom for billionaires and corporations that's freedom from taxation like the freedom for mitt romney to treat as capital gains income a special pay a lower tax rate than the rest of us or the freedom for a corporation like general electric to pay no taxes the time of freedom from regulation like the freedom for koch industries to pollute entire towns or let oil pipes explode if government regulators are taken out of the picture but talking about freedom from litigation like the freedom for doctors and hospitals to not get

sued when the amputate the wrong leg or freedom for banks not to get sued if they gamble away your savings or blow up your home's value the so-called big idea about freedom pushed by republicans for more than three decades and now being pushed by mitt romney is very specific despite how vague it sounds it means freedom for the wealthy elite to continue getting richer while the rest of us get poorer and poorer that's why over the last three decades ever since these freedom fighters for the rich took power wealth inequality in the united states has exploded in the middle classes come under siege wall street was given freedom to crash our economy and then get a bailout big oil was given freedom to destroy the gulf of mexico and yet continue to receive billions in subsidies courtesy of you and me the taxpayer. but what new freedoms have average americans received. were free debate pay more for basic essentials like food or energy or education or free to choke on pollution or free

to go fight in wars that george bush wants to fight to get political capital privatized so security republicans really believed in freedom and they should subscribe to the idea of freedom put forward by franklin roosevelt when he said that necessitous man and his people lacking the necessities in the sense that us men are not free men freedom requires basic essentials to be met freedom requires food a job a roof over your head a decent education healthcare that was the whole basis of f.d.r.'s new deal to give freedom to working americans republicans on the other hand want to give freedom to the super rich guys like mitt romney and this is why mitt romney ridiculed half the nation who feels entitled to food in that little home video it's clear mitt romney doesn't think access to food should be a basic freedom that he doesn't know a freedom means for working people so while mitt romney was busy selling this old

big idea for billionaires president obama revealed what his big idea is to him it's about the middle class and freedom to once again achieve the american dream. what would you like to see happen well in your four years ago to tell you steve i think there's no bigger purpose right now the making sure that if people work or this country they can get ahead that's the central american idea that's how we sent a man to the moon because there was an economy that works for everybody. this actually is a big idea it's a big idea because it's what roosevelt succeeded in doing eighty years ago with the new deal which was to create a new contract between working people and the government that they had created that contract was simple if you work hard do it you're supposed to do keep your nose clean then you can achieve the american dream of a comfortable life a decent life

a contract has been shredded terribly here in the last three decades the american dream is harder and harder to achieve for working people while the very wealthy have enough wealth to achieve the american dream a thousand times over president obama's big idea is to restore this contract that means making the rich like mitt romney pay their fair share again and it means strengthening the social safety net it means protecting domestic manufacturing with trade protection and it means really recognizing democracy in the workplace with organized labor republicans like mitt romney think all of those things restrict freedom but in reality they only restrict freedom for the billionaire class and the corporations who want the freedom to prey on the rest of us for profits so the big question for this election is do we have freedom for all real freedom and freedom to have basic essential needs met so that the american dream is easier to achieve for all working americans or do we just have the freedom for the rich as defined by reagan and now by rami freedom from the oil barons to pollute freedom from banks to steal and freedom for paris hilton mitt romney to avoid paying their fair share in

taxes that's the question freedom shouldn't be reserved just for the one percent. and that's the way it is the night monday september twenty fourth two thousand and twelve and don't forget the mock receive begins with you get out there get active tag you're it. mission free clinic ation free lance for charges free. range month free risk free. to tide free. download free broadcast quality video for your media projects and free media and don to r.t. dot com you. the

friendship vision of russia has started again after two hundred years up at the. sub jet the inferno polian has arrived from overseas to lead the army i have to really take my time to prepare myself to get it right. the bloody battle near moscow is going to start over. james brown will reveal the victor the soldiers are back to do it all again. but you know version twenty twelve on r.t. .